Bannon claims President warned special counsel against probing family finances and linked Mueller’s team to money‑laundering investigations involvi...

passage in the interview: the president had admonished the special counsel not to cross the line into his family’s finances. “Ehhh ... ehhh ... ehhh!” screeched Bannon, making the sound of an emergency alarm. “Don’t look here! Let’s tell a prosecutor what not to look at!” Bannon then described the conversation he’d had with the president earlier that day: “I went right into him and said, “Why did you say that?’ And he says, “The Sessions thing?’ and I say, ‘No, that’s bad, but it’s another day at the office.’ I said, “Why did you say it was off limits to go after your family’s finances?’ And he says, “Well, it is ... .” I go, “Hey, they are going to determine their mandate... . You may not like it, but you just guaranteed if you want to get anybody else in [the special counsel] slot, every senator will make him swear that the first thing he’s going to do is come in and subpoena your fucking tax 299 returns. Bannon, with further disbelief, recounted the details of a recent story from the Financial Times about Felix Sater, one of the shadiest of the shady Trump-associated characters, who was closely aligned with Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen (reportedly a target of the Mueller investigation), and a key follow-the-money link to Russia. Sater, “get ready for it—I know this may shock you, but wait for it’—had had major problems with the law before, “caught with a couple of guys in Boca running Russian money through a boiler room.” And, it turns out, “Brother Sater” was prosecuted by—‘wait”—Andrew Weissmann. (Mueller had recently hired Weissmann, a_high- powered Washington lawyer who headed the DOJ’s criminal fraud division.) “You’ve got the LeBron James of money laundering investigations on you, Jarvanka. My asshole just got so tight!” Bannon quite literally slapped his sides and then returned to his conversation with the president. “And he goes, ‘That’s not their mandate.’ Seriously, dude?” Preate, putting out the Chinese food on a table, said, “It wasn’t their mandate to put Arthur Andersen out of business during Enron, but that didn’t stop Andrew Weissmann”—one of the Enron prosecutors. “You realize where this is going,” Bannon continued. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann first and he is a money laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner ... It’s as plain as a hair on your face... . It goes through all the Kushner shit. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me. But ... ‘executive privilege!’ ” Bannon mimicked. “ “We’ve got executive privilege!’ There’s no executive privilege! We proved that in Watergate.” An expressive man, Bannon seemed to have suddenly exhausted himself. After a pause, he added wearily: “They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.” With his hands in front of him, he mimed something like a force field that would HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020094